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September 25th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
There are a couple of very mainstream parenting boards I read and post on occassionally. There is something I’d dearly love to post about but I don’t think I have the guts! I really need to rant though, so I’m going to do it here:
Why, why, why do people force their babies and children to do things that are so upsetting to them? There are so many posts saying “my daughter hates school, what should I do?”; “my son screams in distress whenever I drop him at nursery”; “my daughter’s just started wetting the bed since she started school”; ”my son’s being bullied and he’s only 5!” and so on and so forth. I always try to find out if the parents are needed to work to try and make myself understand why they are forcing their children to do these things despite all the signs of emotional distress, but mostly there is no reason other than that making your child do these things is part of being a parent. People even write about how they feel pathetic when it upsets them seeing their child in distress! The same sort of thing is written by parents who are having trouble doing controlled crying with their babies. Why can’t people hear their instincts screaming out to them “this is wrong…stop doing it!”? Why can’t they hear their children screaming out “I’m not ready for this!”? Sometimes I wonder whether it’s because they just don’t know any other way…but then when I try to suggest ‘other ways’ I get shouted down. So it’s not that they think there is no alternative - they truly believe the alternative would be more harmful than what they’re doing already. In response to a query about whether or not to bring a distressed baby into the parents’ bed in the night, one poster said “I wouldn’t. You might find it hard to get her back in her own bed and who wants a toddler sleeping in their bed???”. Is a toddler in your bed for a few years better or worse than your baby growing up into an emotionally insecure person for the rest of his life? There is so much evidence showing how it really is damaging to a baby’s brain to be left to cry and not to be able to form secure attachments to a small number of significant adults but people just disregard it. A colleague of mine said, in response to the programme to be screened on C4 (comparing different parenting strategies) that if they proposed doing an experiment whereby children from one family were fed refined-sugary foods for a week and another on really healthy food, no one would ever take part because the role food has on health is well documented in the media. But the effect on a child’s health of bad food could easily and quickly be reversed, unlike the experiment of leaving a baby to cry vs. meeting his needs…the results of which will affect that child for his entire life.
Edited to add: So, I got up the guts and posted it. Immediately got flamed. The answer to my question is that parents just refuse to believe the evidence and truly, truly trust that if it’s in a book, and in a book that’s popular, then it must be right even if there are other books saying the opposite that are actually evidence-based rather than opinion-based. But, I still don’t understand why parents refuse to believe the evidence?
Edited to add again!: When I posted my post, I initially regretted it when I got flamed. I’ve since had some much more helpful responses and I am starting to understand a bit more. The thing is that I am lucky. I’ve not only been brought up trusting in instincts, but have been supported and encouraged in that trust. I’ve read books and spent time with people who also feel the same way. There’s a new mum at our HE group who plans to HE and plans to do it autonomously but is very wary that it might mean her children won’t learn key things. Don’t we all worry about that? But doesn’t the extent to which we worry about it diminish the more time we spend with other autonomously HE’d children older than our own and the more we see our children learning without our teaching them? So, whether or not we’re exposed to alternative ideas, if we don’t have support for them from those around us, and, perhaps more importantly, don’t see them working out for other families older than our own, then we may never truly have the courage to trust that the alternatives really do work and really do allow children to be happy and fulfilled and to grow into independence. People are saying things like ’well it’s all very well but what happens when they’re still running to Mummy when they’re 18?’ or ‘taking a bullied child out of school just teaches them to run away from things’. Unless parents see what happens to children who are removed from unhappy situations; unless they see that these children flourish and become happy, self-confident individuals who branch out into genuine independence happily and securely at an appropriate age; they will never trust that responding to their child’s distress and alleviating it as soon as they can will be the best option. To so many parents, stopping a child crying by cuddling it will spoil them and no research will persuade them otherwise unless they repeatedly see real-life examples. I wish I could package up all that I’ve been lucky enough to learn and experience and hand it to other parents, but I can’t. All parents have to make their journey themselves and I have to just hope that the small exposure they may have to how we do things, and to how our children turn out, might add to any other exposure they have to similar families and might, just might, give them the confidence to trust their children.
Yup. I was participating in the comments section of a very mainstream parenting blog in one of our major newspapers, and the premise the writer was using gave me a huge insight, though. He was talking about how he and his wife had dealt with their toddler daughter’s suddenly unsettled sleep patterns by taking her into their room (in her cot), and summed it up as “We’ve found a way that works - but it’s cheating”.
I think that there is a huge overtone that kids can’t be allowed to dictate to parents because that way brathood lies (that concept came up repeatedly in the comments as well). Parents are brought up fully invested in seeing their own parents as authority figures and not having their own needs met routinely, so of course they are terrified of the idea that they might be capable of making decisions for themselves that go outside those lines (I am including myself here). The miracle is that anyone moves beyond it, really. And it’s not a coincidence that those who do tend to be skeptical of the rest of the edifice of society’s authority as well. The structural forces behind conventional baby/infant care are the same as those behind compulsory schooling - atomising the family, destroying or preventing self-reliance, and channelling the future adult into a world where all the answers to every question can be solved by buying something. Investing in things, rather than people, is the necessary foundation of the consumer society, hence “detachment parenting” is the norm (and taking your child into your room is seen as “cheating”, but buying your baby a teddy bear with a tape recording of mama’s heartbeat to keep him more settled in his lonely cot away from you is not - let’s be honest: what are we cheating here, biological instinct or some manufacturer’s “right” to make a profit off parental anxieties?). It is absolutely necessary to destroy the instinctive bonds between parent and child as early as possible when the basic unit of society is The Consumer rather than The Family.
Ahem. *gets off soapbox*
Comment by Liz in Australia • @ September 25, 2007 @ 10:27 pm
All my babies slept in my bed for varying lengths. none of my teens do now.
BUT. Now that they are teens, they are comfortable with coming to see me when I am tucked in early.
I figured out once that when your kids are babies, that is only 20% of the time they spend with you. Only TWENTY percent!!! And that’s not of their whole lives, just the first 20 years. Why not hold them and love them as much as possible for that short time?
I stopped participating in mainstream mommy forums a while back. It;s too tiring being an activist for everyone, and now I am at the point where new moms *do* come to me and ask how did I do it. *Then* I tell them - and they can see that I didn’t screw up my kids at all.
(any more than usual that is
)
Comment by
Andrea • @ September 25, 2007 @ 11:20 pm
I’ve been similarly participating in mainstream forums just recently - it’s the beginning of the school year, and in a way I think we have a responsibiltiy to be out there for a couple of weeks, just gently putting on each thread “you do know that legally they don’t have to be educated in any way until they are 5, and if they don’t want to go to school then, they don’t have to, oh and by the way, here’s a link to EO” Because so few people even know that HE is an option, and so many think that compuslory schooling begins with the pre-school class at 3.
(some of my posts about “why consider HE?”, which turned into a Netmums debate thread, are on my blog…)
Comment by Emma • @ September 26, 2007 @ 2:41 pm
I changed my mind.
I just got really flamed, and it brought home to me the potentially self-defeating nature of preaching to the unwelcoming.
I posted about it on my blog (with a quote of your best bit).
http://childrenarepeople.blogspot.com/2007/09/consequences-of-being-openly-judgmental.html
Comment by Emma • @ September 26, 2007 @ 8:17 pm
not sure that type of parenting forum is where ppl want to hear those things.
Do any of them ever talk about their children crying if they can’t go to school?
Comment by jax • @ September 26, 2007 @ 9:00 pm
Hi Clare,
I was reading about that programme over at Gill’s blog (sometimes it’s peaceful) and had left the following comment. I’ve been fascinated by this question because I have been one of the parents that believed the spoiling theories (20 years ago) but am now so far down the other end of the pole! Here it is:
“People really do think they are going to give babies the idea that they can manipulate/coerce their parents (and we wouldn’t like them to ‘become manipulative and coercive’ … read: spoiled)!
Well, let’s hope they can ‘manipulate and coerce’ us, otherwise how would they communicate their needs to us when we are so busy listening to ‘experts’ and ignoring the very people who know exactly what babies need (babies, that is
There is often a misguided common sense logic to some of that stuff that can trip you up because it might logically apply to someone who largely has impulse control and may be using screaming/uproar to consciously coerce (still depends on your perspective).
However, it is more than inappropriate to apply the theory/practice to babies who only survive and thrive by having their impulses/instincts taken seriously, physiologically behave as if they are going to starve/die/are abandoned if not attended very quickly, particularly when crying (begin quickly to go into a kind of physiological shutdown to conserve nutritive resources), and have no concept of ‘future’ or time that might allow them to think that there is a hope of their unmet needs ever being met.
I only have to imagine the panic I would experience if I had no concept of time/change and was refused food, warmth, or an end to loneliness. What a terrifying and bleak prospect that would be.
Timed crying/feeding/holding, therefore, must feel no less cruel for a small baby than leaving them day and night to cry, starve, and feel alone and vulnerable.
Why does that seem so logical in many cultures and yet not in ours? I’d say it is economics … interesting to see that the commissioning of parenting manuals began with industrialization. Now we have to have manuals to undo the damage of manuals.”
I also remembered reading somewhere about what Freud called ‘camouflage’. It is a process by which (in this context) parents use the pretext that something is ‘good and necessary’ for their child in order to do what actually suits them and their perceived needs. They ignore their instincts because they don’t actually want to put the immediate time and effort in (the stitch in time that saves 9). They want their evenings to themselves, and they don’t want to allow their more selfish lives to change in order to meet a child’s needs. In the short term, they are convinced that there will be less work as a result … and that it will pay off in the long term too. However, it is actually really hard work and painful if you are following those methods (against your instincts) because you bought the theory (and your camouflage doesn’t work well enough!)
I know people who’s kids sleep through from early and practically put themselves to bed. It is tempting, still, when I’m feeling burnt out and isolated from support. (But I also know what battles and heartache it often took and the cost of breaking a child’s will). Some children will passively allow their needs to not be met. I don’t think that is, necessarily, likely to make it less damaging for the child who learns not to communicate, listen to, or even rate their own needs.
I know the investment I put in is important and I’m putting my energy into understanding my children’s needs, and into taking their feelings and ideas as seriously as I would if they were able to communicate them in adult language … giving them the message that they should also do so.
Comment by Sally • @ October 1, 2007 @ 8:58 pm
I could write loads here - but its all been said above.
So I’ll just say “I agree with you all”. Its wrong isn’t it, even my little girl sees that and she’s only 3, but parents apparently don’t.
I think most parents see themselves as being in a club, following club rules and regulations, so they don’t mess up.
Me? I wouldn’t be welcome. I’d be quickly shown the door!
Comment by Jules • @ October 2, 2007 @ 11:15 am
I work with women who are survivors of
s exual a buse, and though it might seem a bit radical to draw an analogy between this and the issues with parenting, to me they are one and the same.
children get abused in a family setting very often because the other parent (or perhaps parents where it is a friend/ other family member),
simply
DO NOT LISTEN
or acknowledge *all the signs* of the child’s trauma.
I’ve heard some totally unbelievable accounts of where abuse happened with screaming where the parent was downstairs and ignored it. or when allegations are made, the parent ignores it and says, ‘no, no, can’t possibly be’
Honestly, it’s *mental*, but put it into the context of this unintuitive, don’t- listent-to-what-*you*-are-actually- *saying*-about-your-child,
1. going to school
2. being hungry
3. needing a hug
4. feeling frightened, sad, lonely
etc etc etc and it all makes sense.
see, the complaint is made often by parents, but with no connection to the cause. DUH.
anyway, it’s late. hope this makes sense.
thanks for blogging all this and about the b’feeding too above this post.
it’s super work.
Comment by shukr • @ October 11, 2007 @ 1:34 am
oh, I wanted to also add, should we not be doing some kind of campaign, writing letters to Boots and Mothercare that they should remove the Gina books from their stores out of courtesy to babies, children, parents - and in recognition of their *supposed* support of b’feeding, and replace with some better titles?
Could you co ordinate something like this if we initially went via all the BFC groups?
I can liase with ABM. If we all wrote a letter and reprinted to a number of stores each ,that at least would have been something towards making it clear that Gina is not socially acceptable to a chunk of the population.
x
Comment by shukr • @ October 11, 2007 @ 1:39 am
and, sorry, but I just saw you are younger than me and it made me go ‘eeek’. lol.
assumptions, eh!
not *much* younger, but still ,P
Comment by shukr • @ October 11, 2007 @ 1:40 am